Boredom+analysis

    When looking at the responses on question 4, people did not take the situation seriously or did not remember what did exactly help them to feel boring. Many people said, “I can't remember precisely what they were” since it was a boring experience. Who will think seriously in a boring experience? Most of the situations were problems of length, self-dragging mode instruction, a boring instructor, misconnected interaction between the teacher and the learner, a lack of opportunity for presenting the result of efforts which the student had prepared so well. An interesting fact was that some of the surveyed were asked to be quiet in any case. In general, I found that most of the cases were non-interactive or students were not asked to interact with peers or the instructor.  Talking about subject or category, literature or reading a book and doing a follow-up task was amongst the ones where students become bored. Theories of Mathematics explanation was ranked as the second. PowerPoint presentation with non-interaction took a portion also.  Considering the instructor who appeared to bore the students the students read articles, read presentations, or the students were told not to question anything in the book or material. There was a lack of interaction.     The surveyed felt interested when they engaged themselves in ‘hands-on’ learning experiences or to simulate what they learn. Some enjoyed debate or discussion which is a method of interaction.  Subjects that produced interesting experiences were the “learning how to” type of classes. When the learning occured, any follow-up simulation or discussion happened to support students’ understanding. Even in a literature class, discussion was a media to deliver the interaction between the instructor and the learner. We would learn book knowledge and then apply it in a practical application – Q3 Answer 73 - was the answer that I can apply to other answers in the survey. Also, a variety of learning strategies made the student happy to learn. Unfortunately, there were only a few cases when students had fun with Mathematics. I found one where the instructor used a very creative, but not effective approach, to the contents of Mathematics or explanation of theories. The delivery of the contents was very irrelevant to the contents. (This was a math course. The instructor made up a song with subtraction facts and students were expected to sing along. The instructor sang out a question and students were expected to sing the answer as a group. Then, he asked some students to ask the question in a song to the other students and if a student didn't know an answer the other students could explain. The next day he asked individual questions and expected everyone to know the correct answers.” Q4 Answer 132 in page : A Learning Experience that was Fun) <span style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt"> <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The instructors were knowledgeable of the contents that the students enjoyed. The environment of the class was supportive of the students and the instructor, challenging the students to immerse themselves in learning and giving them opportunities to experience via direct or indirect ways. Also, well-prepared and well-organized materials helped them have fun learning. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Self-motivation is the key to utilize any material that I would create. Because what I would create will need self-motivation; for it is an educational game. The material is not supposed to be used as a support to my lecture or instruction. Based on the result of the survey, I realized that <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial"> 1. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Interaction would determine whether it is interesting to the student or not. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial"> 2. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Different types of interaction will be beneficiary in any circumstances on any learning activity. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial"> 3. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The type of subject or topic would be more interesting with any specific type of interaction. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">In conclusion, I found utilizing PowerPoint as a teaching method for motivating students learning not effective. It was very helpful that watching a class with eyes of a learner would be critical to presenting a successful learning activity. Additionally, the result of this survey makes me deeply concerned about my lifetime question again; how can I make Mathematics be more interactive?
 * <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Executive Summary **
 * <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">I tried to get a clue on how to organize the surveyed to find the difference between ages, or sex but found nothing. As usual, when I diagnose the difference between the controlled sample and non-controlled sample, I utilized raw data. Since the result of the survey only shows summarized data, I could not arrange the data to get what I needed to diagnose and understand which was whose opinion. **
 * <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">Sex was not significant in terms of whether this survey represented sex because the difference between the number of females and males was not large. However, I found that this survey was mainly from those who were educated more than the college level. **<span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">This means that current k-12 teaching method and skills and the learning environment may not be seen in this survey.
 * <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">What Makes Learning Boring? **
 * <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">No wonder that restricting activities - such as sitting still, passive learning - such as merely listening or watching and the lowest learning step - remembering, make for boredom in the survey. Looking through the data, it shows that non-interactive or non-creative activity added boredom to the surveyed. One interesting fact was that even though interacting with the instructor was somewhat highly rated, it lead to boredom. This is one thing that we, as instructors, need to carefully analyze in our specific environment, such as the type of instruction, and the type of interaction. **
 * <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">What Makes Learning Fun? **
 * <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">The **<span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">result of question no 3, agreed with my assumption that interaction is the key element for having students have fun became obvious. Though ‘listen’ and ‘watch’ rate were still high, interaction with someone or something showed great significance. More than actual moving or activities, interaction works to attract students, though ‘sit still’ rate was about 50%, the surveyed had a fun experience )
 * <span style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Implications **